"Single instance" machines

From: Lawrence Walker <lwalker_at_mail.interlog.com>
Date: Fri Jan 1 18:45:35 1999

On 31 Dec 98 at 17:41, Kees Stravers wrote:

> I have never heard of the Philips Micom word processor. That's not so
> strange, Philips has made a lot of different computer systems, it is an
> enormous task to catalogue them all. Sometimes Philips even sold the
> same computer under two different names, e.g. their third XT clone was
> known as the NMS9100 for the consumer market, but sold as the P3105
> by a totally different section of Philips to the professional market,
> and it was the exact same machine. I tried several web searches for
> 'Philips Micom', but all I could come up with were a couple of firms
> offering conversion services for its files, and a CV of a Canadian
> researcher who mentiones having written software for the thing.
> I once saw a very old Philips wordprocessor, with a cabinet a the size
> of a cubic metre under the desk, a separate terminal for i/o and a
> weird thirteen bit parallel daisywheel printer which had no smarts at all
> (the computer had to tell it how many microsteps to turn the roll and move
> the head etc) but this machine used magnetic cards the size of a punched
> card to save files to, not disks.
>
> The P2000 family I was talking about has four lines that are incompatible
> with each other.
> - The P2000T (cassette, 40 char video) / P2000M (disk, 80 char video)
> which was the most common here in The Netherlands. They were the same
> internally but had different video. Most programs were interchangable.
> A CP/M card was available for it from the Philips computer club. Also
> a floppy disk controller for the T that was compatible with the internal
> one in the M.
> - The P2000C luggable, the most advanced one, CP/M, even had a 8088
> 'CoPower' card available for it that could run MSDOS. You could attach
> an external hard disk via a SASI interface. It could read and write the
> disk formats from all the other members, and of a lot of CP/M systems too.
> - The P2000B/P2500, a CP/M disk system with 5.25i disks, monitor and disks
> in one cabinet like the P2000M, on top of a passive backplane cabinet
> like the Northstar with everything on cards. 8i floppy controller available.
> - The P5020/P5040 word processor system. The P5020 was a monster system, an
> all-in-one system with a 15 inch 36 line system, two 5.25i drives next
> to the monitor, internal card cage with passive backplane (not the same
> as the P2500). The entire thing stood on a big tilt/swivel pedestal.
> Heavy keyboard made of metal, no plastic exept for the keys. The P5040
> was a more modern version, smaller and looking like a PC with separate
> monitor and all. There was an add-on machine, called the P5010, which
> was a keyboard with a single line lcd display and a cassette drive, which
> could be used to enter long texts. You then transported these texts serially
> to the P5020 or P5040 for the finishing touches. Maybe this system was the
> Micom, I don't know.
> Some bright minds in the Philips computer club made a new ROM for the
> P5010 so you could write Z80 machine code programs with it. Later there
> even was CP/M for the P5020/5040. Multiplan with 36 lines really was a
> treat.
>
> I only have pictures of the P2000M and the P2000C on my pages. The other
> systems are buried in the garage, it would take quite some digging to
> photograph them. I'll go look if I have some magazine pictures of them.
>
> Kees
>
 The Micom seems like an amalgum of most of the above. It looked like an
oversized Pet or TRS80 mod.2. At the moment it's buried with brochures , club
newsletters and programs under about 5 printers and other assorted items. I've
always thought of it as an S-100 but I am a complete novice regarding them.
I'll be digging it out in the next couple of weeks and will have more info.
 It used a large Shugart 8" fdd about the size of an XT and had a Qume
daisy-wheel printer that had a massive external power supply. I don't think it
had any internal smarts. It had an excellent WP program and limited graphics
capabilities. It was modem capable and Philips had a program for that. I
remember the newsletter mentioning that 3rd party suppliers could provide
modems (and I imagine cards) so I would suspect it had a common bus. They
also had a fairly lengy article on the differences between synchronous and
asynchronous transmission IIRC.
I'll get back to you when I excavate it.

ciao larry
lwalker_at_interlog.com
Received on Fri Jan 01 1999 - 18:45:35 GMT

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